How Do You Find the Right Caregiver?

We obviously get calls every day at EasyLiving for home care, primarily from family members asking for help with their family members.  As you can imagine, each call is different, each family has their own unique needs and circumstances.  Similar to most other times in life, needing a caregiver in your home is not something you create a plan for – one day you wake up and you need one.

It is typically the client’s first time to need help in their home and one of the first concerns is having someone else in their home.  This is a truly understandable feeling.  I look around my house right now, mail – some of it personal left out on the kitchen table.  My nightstand looks like a combo library and lotion store.  You get the picture, not all of my home is ready for someone other than me to invade it.

The next thought is what the caregiver will do when the person needing care is sleeping or sitting and enjoying a television show.  How does the caregiver know what to do next?  The individual needing care often feels the responsibility of entertaining the caregiver and keeping a conversation going.  Sometimes that is good, sometimes it is exhausting.

An extremely detailed Care Plan can help tremendously in providing a caregiver step by step instructions on what the client’s needs are and how best to meet them.  Directions stating what the client wants for breakfast, down to how many sugars the client likes in their coffee to stating how many times a week they want each room in the house vacuumed provides instruction.  Details such as reviewing each activity of daily living and providing instructions regarding personal grooming such as: “Caregiver can put toothpaste on client’s toothbrush located in client’s bathroom, bring emesis or kidney basin to bed for client to rinse and also a paper cup from kitchen with water in it.”  The Care Plan creation provides the road map for great care and the opportunity to build a great relationship.

Building a congenial relationship with a caregiver is a two way street.  Getting past the caregivers physical looks and accent is often challenging for the client.  Sometimes two people can tell right away whether they are a fit or not, sometimes it takes a few visits.  Building a relationship with more than one caregiver is helpful since all caregivers take vacation and sometimes get sick.  You want to have more than one caregiver know your routine and wishes.

Our home care team takes the time to create the right relationship the first time from the information gathered from the client as well as our caregivers.  However, sometimes it take a few tries to find the right caregiver. Effort on both sides helps make this easier and with our home care team involved it keeps the client from having to tell a caregiver they don’t want them back.  All the client needs to do is call the office and our team will find someone else that may be perfect.